Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Queering Fresno: An LGBT+ Reading

History is usually taught in terms of lineage, nation, and ancestry, which often relegates Queer histories to the margins since Queer communities are often generational and not linked through a specific lineage, nation, or ancestry. Each reader, a member of the LGBT+ community, will share work grounded in their own experiences, creating a new kind of history based on archiving our experiences.

RANDA JARRAR's work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Utne Reader, Salon.com, Guernica, The Rumpus, The Oxford American, Ploughshares, The Sun, and others. Her first book, the Arab-American coming of age novel, A Map of Home, is now on many college syllabi. It was published in half a dozen languages & won a Hopwood Award, an Arab-American Book Award, and was named one of the best novels of 2008 by the Barnes and Noble Review. Her new book, Him, Me, Muhammad Ali, was named one of the Most Anticipated Books of 2016 by The Millions, a Key Collection for Fall 2016 by Library Journal, and one of Electric Literature‘s 25 best collections of the year. She has received fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, Hedgebrook, and others, and in 2010 was named one of the most gifted writers of Arab origin under the age of 40. She runs RAWI (the Radius of Arab-American Writers) and loves coordinating events and strengthening communities.

ARIELLE JONES earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. While in San Francisco she served as Editor in Chief for the campus’s undergraduate literary magazine. Prior to joining the M.F.A. program at California State University, Fresno, she was grateful to attend the Iowa Summer Writing Festival.

AARON POOCHIGIAN earned a PhD in Classics from the University of Minnesota and an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University. His book of translations from Sappho, Stung With Love, was published by Penguin Classics in 2009 and his thriller in verse, Mr. Either/Or, will be released by Etruscan Press in Fall of 2017. His work has appeared in such journals as The Guardian, POETRY and The Times Literary Supplement.

STEVEN SANCHEZ is a CantoMundo Fellow and Lambda Literary Fellow. His debut full-length poetry collection, Phantom Tongue (Sundress Publications, 2018), won the Rochelle Ratner Memorial Award and was selected by Mark Doty. He is also the author of two chapbooks, To My Body (Glass Poetry, 2016) and Photographs of Our Shadows (Agape Editions, 2017). His poems have appeared in Poet Lore, Nimrod, and Crab Creek Review, among other journals.